A Madman Person Guy

Why this negativity about "machines taking the jobs" all around? You sound like 19th century Frenchmen to me. It's not like we need more people in the world, and most anyone with something between their ears who's worked a hands-on job for any longer time (yours truly) would rather be doing the theoretical stuff (or, to quote my uncle; "You'll know you're on the right track when you work from behind a desk and come home to play in the garage, rather than the other way around"). If anything can drop the nativity and increase the performance of and living standards for people, then it's technological and industrial improvement. I don't see the issue as being that we need to control the advancement of the tech, because no matter how much you try you're not going to be able to suppress it and maintain a growing, free capitalist system while at the same time maintaining economical and environmental efficiency (and if you doubt this, just look at China). The issue - the problem - is as always the bloody people, and getting into their heads that they need to take heed to things, no matter how "uncomfortable" in their worldview, because they happen to be simple mechanistic facts.

I'm neither for it, nor against it, although for the sake of my own amusement I'll point out that it's usually me doing the friendzoning. When you don't connect with anyone either way, friendships and relationships are not just interchangeable but both also without value, and the only thing that matters is the sex or the exchanges taking place. What I was really referring to was that I'm trying to take the "normal" view of relationships here, rather than my own approach, and suggesting that a) that I recognize that my own model of behavior is destructive and cruel and that for intellectual purposes it is thus not the one which should be modeled here and b) that I'm having some trouble with this. Mainly, I have to say, because I can't really comprehend how someone would want to be able to completely trust another person, nor how this would ever be achievable in practical terms through anything but blackmail.

Well, too high profit margins does open the door to exploitation and greed, on behalf of either the workers or the company executives. If people just hoard money rather than put it to work, it becomes essentially pointless in the apparatus of the society. You can't rely on public donation and involvement or the altruism of CEOs for the "necessary charities" of society that create the "societal wealth" he's talking about, and forcing a company to put it into its charter to spend its money and time on more public-spirited endeavors might be a good thing... ...to which I'd respond that it's better to leave the door open for greed, hoarding and financial ruthlessness, but still have efficiency and the potential for growth, than rule out those former at the cost of running an effective business and risking stagnation and moral misappropriation. And besides, who decides what charity is "necessary"? Who decides what "social wealth" is desirable? After a long time of observing the man on the street or in the office chair, I for one have no interest in helping the majority of people out there, even those in dire straits. Rather the opposite, in fact. Good will can not supplant, can not fully oppose and should not be allowed to oppose ruthlessness and efficiency in business practice. Good will and altruism shouldn't even be part of the equation, and neither should misanthropy. The only issue should be the cost benefit equation, after the goals are set. Everything that tries to interfere with that or steer the business around is just another stone in the river, a disruption of the path of least resistance and another waste of time and money.

I wouldn't put it quite that simply, but that's certainly the gist of it. While I would debate the implications of the meaning of "forced", the proposal of using polls as an alternative to calculated market strategies can only be detrimental in the long run to the business of any company that adopts the model. The advantage of a capitalist system is the likewise "forced" operation of making all interested partners behave as rational actors from an economic standpoint (or at least as close to rational actors as you might expect from human beings...). Throwing this out the window is, if not destroying the capitalist model and turning it into another system entirely, then at least squandering the advantages of it. Any system, political or economic, governed by opinion is implicitly doomed to not only fall victim to unworkable business models and idiotic mistakes, due to its human elements' subjectivity, susceptibility to the Moralistic Fallacy and inability to think statistically, but is also likely to experience an inefficiency which corellates directly to the number of opinions and motives of the individuals influencing the system itself.

Personally, I enjoy being the one doing the friendzoning. Flirting subtly but mercilessly or just being all-around potent, stand-up, self-confident and unavoidable, then feigning ignorance or backpedaling just as they've gotten something into their head, and then carefully phrasing the reason why you'd "never act on that impulse" or "couldn't see us together like that" to suggest that you're putting her down much more kindly than might be expected. It's a more studied and more soul-crushing thing to do than doing the Bateman comeback to girls in the gym or the pub, which makes it more delicious. And yes, before you ask, it's cost me the friendship of a couple of girls, although I'll also note that more than that have chosen not to distance themselves, presumably on account of being suckers. In either case, wrecking egos like that is tasty, and I'd recommend it to anyone. Oh, and regarding "admiration", MMX... I think that asking for admiration, either in the way the term is usually used or as you construe it, of a woman as a man in this age and time is aiming way, way too high. The most you can hope for is respect. And you'll never get respect from a woman if you ask for anything, in my experience. Nor can you demand it, because that would be just as bad. The former reveals weakness or whininess which is instantly unattractive, and the latter is brutish and domineering. Everything you really want from a woman, she has to think she's giving of her own initiative, if you both want her to still feel good and not to have any strings attached. But the best option is not to ask, demand or wait for a reward for your work, but to be self-sufficient. If you have "emotional needs", satisfy them on your own, just like you fill your own bank account, decorate your own house and cook your own meals. This will allow you to interact with her on your own terms, to be more attractive in yourself but to also be less tied down, among a host of other advantages. You should not make yourself emotionally dependent on anyone, particularly a woman. Let the interaction be a reward, but not a requisite, and that'll keep it from becoming an obligation and a chore. It's better for her, because it allows her to be "charitable", and better for you, because it keeps your power where it belongs; with yourself. Sure, no man is an island. But if it benefits, we can strive at least to be barely connected peninsulas.

Of course I have to, that's the flippin' point. And I didn't say it would only be for sex; I'm hardly as preoccupied with that as most guys I see around me. And I'm too suspicious of attractive or well-adjusted people to get a fair trade out of the physical versus the social aspect of a relationship in any case. But having a second person around confers other benefits as well; no matter how dim or frumpy they might be, they can still operate a telephone or take out a loan, or they might know some people. Whatever. That's an individualist view in the extreme, by current social standards. Can't say I disapprove, but if that last point is true, then I have to judge my approach to this whole matter as the proper and correct one in pretty much all regards, and I wouldn't want that. I can sympathize with your dislike of attractive people. The problems that I see immediately from your point of view should be that an aversion to a well-off partner is just silly, seeing as you don't want to have to support them, particularly if you're a woman who's thinking of ever having kids, and because you don't want to foster some kind of creepy clingy codependency, and that whenever you look for a man who's more interested in you as a person than in sex than what is usual in men, you're also running the risk of either getting someone who you have absolutely no pull on and who you'll have difficulty in establishing a truly intimate relationship with, or hooking some genuinely cold fish. Hmm... There is a fun little conflict there. Now, this is just anecdotal, but although not every idiot I've seen has been obsessed with sex, but anyone mostly disinterested with sex I've seen has at least appeared more than moderately intelligent, both in person and in the media...

Nope. Quite the opposite. Which I find inexplicably amusing. Given the quirks of human psychology, I am for the most part astonished that there even exist people who haven't inured themselves to their own flaws in this regard, and are good enough to apologize for their failures, who have become parents in the first place. And now I've got to go and dig out the ol' Johnny Cash...

You expect a digital system, even one with parts of self-evolving programming thrown in, to understand ethics as we see them? Line up; I've got some land I'm sure you'd like to buy... Our modern interpretation of ethics and morals, what with our contemporary disrespect and/or ignorance for the philosophers, is almost entirely based in rote social patterns and sentimentalism. Neither of which you can expect to affect a machine, possibly operating in a virtual environment without any real-life I/O or even a simulation or interpretation of physical existence. And here's the next problem; even given access to a body, an interface to interact with the rest of the world, and the freedom to use it, the "pure" logic of a machine wouldn't draw the same conclusions as a human would. The best we could hope for would be a machine which correctly determined that such concepts as reciprocal altruism and normal conformity would be "good" because they serve a purpose in interaction and cooperation with other reasonably similar or similarly motivated entities. But at the same time, and operating the same program, if e.g. given a body capable of eating organic material and converting it into power, possibly by means of some kind of glucose- or protein-dissolving electricity-generating bacteria or mitochondrial derivative in an internal bag, the same machine would likely have no compunction about eating dead babies. Why not? They're dead anyway, and bite-sized and full of brown adipose tissue. Or, if performing some sufficiently critical function, it might even decide to snack on live people if starved, reasoning its own purpose to be that much more important than their survival. And I know it's not the best example, but it's what came to mind. The image of a metallic monstrosity chowing down on dead babies and hobos does seem strangely exciting.

Democracy is tantamount to socialism is tantamount to communism. They're all based in and reliant on the exact same select and/or vague values of "equality" for their validation and practicability, only to a differently high degree. Taken as an abstraction outside of culture and environment and with individuals as mere components, modeled as rational actors in a political and economical influence-game taking place in informational media, it would appear (well, to me at least) that the level of naïve comprehension of and/or denial of human nature and moralistic appeal will rise of its own accord, causing democracy to gradually turn into socialism, and then into hard-leftism, social constructionism or communism. This process appears to be compounded by the development of Information Technology, and seems to have no brakes other than "culture" or "sociopolitical inertia". The general intelligence and education level of the populace appears to have a sort of "Uncanny Valley" effect on it as well, with a certain threshold that gets crossed and causes negative development rather than positive, with another line that must be crossed once again in order for intelligence to act as a counterforce rather than a contributor. This is my theory. The US fits my model, with its current developments and trends, and several other ideas I have as well, such as the dropping voting participation, which I like to call the "Lizard Effect" (which is ingeniously countered by seats as representation rather than people...). So does Australia, Japan, Russia... and Sweden unfortunately falls very close to the bottom of the curve, with a horrendous left-trending force-index. The result of which I'd say in light of historical evidence is likely to be attempts at social engineering, extreme redistribution, the raising of the status and power of the almost totally inefficient "administrator class", crackpot activism and economic failure. The first political step toward a better future should be the upheaval of democracy.

The comprehension of hypocrisy and irony both place similar standards of self-scrutiny and multi-step logic on the individual. These can only be sidelined by sheer stupidity or truly mindblowing levels of cognitive dissonance and selectivity. I don't even hear that. What I hear is; "Regurgitated ideas of unearned entitlement, myyep myyep myyeeeeeep!".

Precisely. You don't debate whether if the sky is green or not. So she's right after all, though not for the reason she imagined. Because modern feminism is nonsense.

Yes, because tone is entirely translatable to the medium of text, and is absolutely germaine when it comes to discussing matters that come down to principial views. And indeed, his tone was clearly aggressive and unreasonable, not at all pondering and perfectly passable in a formal debate environment. It's true that it might be appropriate to investigate why he would go and disputate with some facebook warrior such as this, since the sane response to any such person or indeed any feminist is to give them the hand and walk away without a word, but couldn't we also ask you to give at least a little benefit of doubt?

A man? That's what's been happening to most men I see around me, at least over here, and from the looks of it it's been happening the last forty years or so. A man, who either isn't satisfied with his hand or cold showers, or who can't stand to be alone or possibly have takeout three days a week, or who feels that he needs to have kids for whatever reason, or any of the former in combination. Loads of people can't fall asleep well without the TV or radio on in the background; it's the same thing. You put up with some inconvenience or bullcrap for the sake of some perks and/or peace of mind. You know you're getting used, and you use in turn. It's no less of a relationship for that, just not an emotional one (though I would rather call it "intellectual"). Hence many of the rationalizations you see, the attitudes displayed by many older men, expressions like "Women; can't live with them, can't live without them", and the easy contempt many men can throw around while discussing their families and how the boorish provider male who can't express himself and thinks he's underappreciated by his family seems to be something of a cultural trope... Do take my callousness for what it is though; it's a colored opinion, stemming from my own personal experience. I wouldn't name my father as a typical example, but I'd say he got slapped with this phenomenon in a way as well, so I witnessed a form of it there. It recurred among the parents of my classmates too. But far more relevant in this case is that it's very much a personal experience for myself. I'm an anti-humanist in a stuck-up social activism-leaning, politically correct and moralist nation and culture. I quite understand how one can come to terms with never speaking one's mind outright, to keep those ghosts from making a racket and start shaking the paintings off the walls. It extends to my family too; I've given up on trying to explain my views or my personal perspective, mostly because if I really went into it with full honesty, my reasons for thinking the way I do would have to come up, and it'd destroy whatever sense of goodwill is left there. And while it'd be nice and satisfying to put down that illusion like the sad old mongrel it is, family members still do favors or act as security for you sometimes, as well as provide inheritance in time, so I'm not going to pull the plug on it just yet. I like sex. I don't like some harpy trying to claw my eyes out because she can't tolerate that I'm in the right when it hurts her self-interested goals, and even less that I hurt her pride because I get how the equation goes and can thus see through her. I'm willing to pretend to care about her emotions, and that I can't see that she's pretending to care about mine, for the right payment; if she pretends, she isn't worth better. And, crucially, I don't have any compunctions or pretensions at higher morality that I can't detail, unlike most of these people who can only say "I love you", but not explain why or even show it properly in action. This makes me evil and sociopathic, true. But the crucial thing is, I don't try and lie to myself about it or excuse it, and try and make sure that if anyone else is fooled it's their own damn fault, as a contrast to the people out there who do evil things and act like utter idiots for the sake of their morality or wishful thinking. Some of us can stand loneliness, so long as it isn't too bleak. In the absence of a society that's actually intellectually honest and open enough to tolerate us, the best strategy is then usually to fake it, smile, and grab what you can until things change, even if it's only because they've become so bad that people are getting shot in the street. So long as you're self-admitting in your despicableness, you're still one step above those who aren't.

I'm wondering whether if you aren't overestimating the ratio of women with self-knowledge who are also actually honest and self-controlled enough to discuss issues like these plainly and simply. Ever listened to some of Paul Elam's talks on his experiences of the psychiatry and counselling business? Women today aren't oriented toward self-knowledge; they're being guided toward self-actualization, or in other words, to go for it and do and say as they please because it's a demonstration of freedom of expression and "We've had it so bad for so long; now it's time to smash the patriarchy!", with the obvious undertone that it's plenty okay to exercise your emotions without restraint and that it's fine to try to manipulate any man you come across, since he's got it so good already and can afford it. At least, that's the definite sense of things I'm getting from women of my generation. Self-knowledge? A personal experience is when I made a former classmate of mine cry not long ago, when I got into a spat with one of her friends who told some very nasty lies about me after we'd slept together once, and I refused to turn the whole thing into a relationship. She immediately took her friend's side, even though she knows me well and ought to have at least doubted the information somewhat, and when I explained how I couldn't believe how gullible she was and why, and she got defensive, I got fed up. She apparently couldn't even stomach the thought that maybe she was letting herself be manipulated by her base emotions. And I'd rate her as no more stupid than the woman on the street; the opposite, in fact. Honestly, I wouldn't say this is a problem of logic or reason to start with, but of argumentation, if all you want to do is keep up a relationship without getting ridden. If most of what you want is just sex and company, and you're willing to settle for a plebeian, remember; most women are sentimentalists, and as such they are even more subject to manipulation than men are. It's just that most of us men don't know the proper way to talk. Take a couple of courses on modern rhetoric, and learn how to jump back and forth, remember particular points in the argument verbatum, and selectively interpret or ignore inconveniences. Keep a male tone and demeanor, of course, since nothing's more likely to provoke a negative reaction out of a woman than seeing male vulnerability, but use the same tactics. Sink to her level and make her feel bad, and she'll feel that she's making unreasonable demands of you, which will make it true to her. You need a bit of savvy to be able to pull this off to start with though, so it's not the strategy for the scatterbrained. If you really want to make a relationship last and consist of genuine emotional attachment though, I'm not the guy to advise you. I'd tell you to tone down your expectations, and look for as much plain speech when it comes to the economics as is possible, and then to just refuse to engage in any sort of bickering over the petty little things. Such as "feelings" of being a bit overlooked or stifled or hurt because someone else wasn't able to read your mind. A successful relationship is likely dependent on two people who are "in tune" or just intelligent enough to realize when the other one didn't intend to be insensitive or unreasonable, and to be able to straighten things out without too many words or pushed buttons.

Doesn't it seem very conspicuous that the occurrence of men with "gender dysphoria" is that much higher than women (statistics disagree, but in general it seems to be a rate of 3 or 4 of the former to 1 of the latter)? I mean, looking at the DSM and definitions, I have to be a bit suspicious as to whether if we've actually gotten that much better at identifying "transpeople" to warrant the rising number of people who opt for gender reassignment. But maybe I'm just a bit too susp-... Oh, wait. Then there's the fact that the greatest issue and reason for suicide among these surgically "corrected" men appears to be that they feel they're not accepted as true women among other women. Then there's the gay men who act stereotypically female, seemingly just because that's how they've been "typecast", there's "metrosexuality", there's mandatory "sensitivity courses", there's the portrayal of women as inherently just more smart or socially savvy in TV series, commercials and movies, there's literature like "Women's Ways of Knowing", there's the blatant feminist bent of most of the media corps in Europe at least, there's an abundance of quotation marks on my part for all these sissifying concepts that entail making yourself act more feminine... and the overweening message from society at large that seems to say; "It's better to be a woman, or at least morally superior". I mean, I wouldn't be so insensitive and disgusting as to suggest that most of these "transwomen" are in fact simply the result of young, insecure and weak men who either haven't had any decent male role models to go by or any typically male behavior images set in their minds, or who haven't been pushed down into the soles of their shoes enough and been taught to man up, or both. And that thus they've come to seek out a different gender role that does not place such a burden on them or which seems like an easier path to some kind of desirability and innate social reward. Or that if questioned, I wouldn't be surprised if most of them would rather fall under the definition of gay men who were simply disturbed and latched on to some concept for validation, be it the social concept of the "superior" femininity or a female idol or what have you. Oh wait. I am that insensitive and crass. So that's exactly what I'm suggesting.

Why should emotionality be defining for you? The whole common conception of disapproval of emotional restraint or sangfroid in our society in general appears to me as nothing but a sort of throw-in from the feminists' side of attacking stereotypically male traits and male culture. As in, they go, "Oh, and while we're tallying up this whole list of things we don't like about men, what else shall we put down? Well, they're unemotional. Yes, let's put that in too; emotionality and empathy, there's a certain link there, at least argumentatively. Let's suggest that because men tend to be competitive and stoic, they're inhumane. That they're a bit obtuse and sociopathic, maybe a bit undeveloped. Yeah, let's go with that". Well, I embrace my sociopathy. I propose that what physical self-restraint is to non-aggression and business, emotional restraint is to culture and intellectuality. And I would encourage any man to be as cold and calculating as is appropriate. Because too little but with the potential to carefully adjust it up is clearly favorable to too much without the capacity to tone it down in most situations. Emotional control and selective ruthlessness are traits we ought to encourage women learn from men, rather than the opposite. You say you "won't go without enjoying my life in every way I wish", and that this includes particular elements such as emotional fulfilment (whatever the hell that is)? Well, then you're selfish the same way they are. There are lots of situations where this isn't the optimal proximate strategy, but you can cash in bigger returns in the long run by making better choices, which requires emotional restraint. Either you have to recognize that you're selfish in the same way most of these women are, or you have to restrain yourself to place yourself on a higher moral ground but suffer emotionally for it. If both sides/attitudes reason the same way (which I do not believe is the case, or at least the causal reasons are different enough to put them on different moral planes) then the one that is in the right ought to be the one that "produces the most morality" in all other instances. With economic productivity numbers, alimony and insurance laws, legal bias and cultural zeitgeist in mind, I think we can see who's in favor here. But I'm not going to make that my main argument, only mention it. In any case, I think you're basically making the "U mad?" argument here, except in finer words, and I'm predisposed to dismiss anyone who makes that mistake, as anyone should be. And quality women don't hide; they exist, and they're out there. It's just that they don't have to settle for anything less than the crop of the cream of men. Gender biased sexual availability and all that. And I think you're both asking way too much when you're talking about a relationship entails being able to utterly trust a partner, seeing as we haven't completely nailed down a lot of the incentivization here...

Here's an interesting thing; if you scream for a little over a year and a half consecutively, you'll have produced only enough sound energy to heat a cup of coffee. Also, the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show a median latency of forty-four point six years, and radon will take about fifteen years off your life, assuming you're in your 30s and you spend 70% of your time inside a heavily contaminated house, but only assuming you would otherwise have lived to 75. Meanwhile, your odds of dying while bicycling are on average 1 in 4,147. I walk past people smoking on the train platform on the way to work; the smokers are taking the opportunity to light up now that there's talk of a ban on smoking in public spaces over here. I travel to work not in a car, due to the fact that it's uneconomical for me, but on the commuter train, where people communicate their flus and stomach bugs to me no matter how much I try and keep clean. I breathe in lots of ozone and some fumes at work, although I try not to. All these little elements of exposure will shorten my life expectancy. But I don't worry about them, because they're minor and marginal, and I am not a hyperbolic little prat. Proportionality is the answer to this question. You're entitled to protest or try and do something about someone barbecuing on the back porch next door, if you're sitting with an open window and fearing for your health. Sure, it's justified. But generally, given what the risks and ramifications of smoke inhalation really are, the proportional response would hardly be noticeable. And here's the thing... are you really worried about your health? Or are you just being an irritable prick, complaining and throwing out a handy excuse? Yeah, people are entitled to ethical self-defense to stop pollution. Most of the time though, that ethical self-defense should barely amount to them making a rude gesture if it is to be proportional, so they're going to have to save up...

Looking at that list, I find myself asking "what do they mean by socialism?". And besides, Norway and Denmark are significantly less socialistic than Sweden, and if they're higher on the list... The criteria they've gone on make the statistics pretty easy to tweak. They're easily muddled and do not necessarily reflect the happiness of the people as individuals. I mean, I can understand why Sweden's scored so high, but let's run through this here... Criterion 1, "real" GDP per capita: Yeah, I want to see the calculations here. Sweden's income tax rates are crazy, and the sheer inefficiency of our bureaucracy due to the whole "diminishing returns" element means I cannot possibly take seriously the idea that we'd score anywhere near Norway or Switzerland. Criterion 2, healthy life expectancy: Not much to say here. Except I'd like to say that Italy, Hong Kong and Singapore all have higher life expectancy ratings for their natives, and frankly I don't intend on squeezing as many years out of my life as I can, if it comes at a significant cost to quality of life, income, time and freedom of choice, etc. Again, diminishing returns. Criterion 3, having "someone to count on": Absolutely vague (hah!). If anything, the cultural climate and general opinion over here is that you can't actually trust the government, and that you shouldn't expect too much of the authorities or institutions. If we're talking friendships and the ability to communicate with people freely or just strike up conversations, Swedes are some of the worst people in the world at this, I have no doubt. We're reticent and we wash our windows and watch our backs studiously; it's simply a question of acclimatization that makes us think this is normal and healthy. This is entirely a question of perspective, not of actual judgment. Criterion 4, perceived freedom to make life choices: I won't go into it too much, but again I tell you that this is again merely a question of perspective. Yeah, as per modern egalitarianism, we're told that "everyone can be anything if they try hard enough". But again, diminishing returns. And we ignore this. As we do the questions about how much money that gets wasted in the public education system here, not to mention the falling grades (particularly those of male students). The only people who've actually had their freedom of this sort increased over the last half century have been women, who've promptly failed to recognize it and resorted to writing whiny columns instead. The few people whose situations are truly "open-ended" generally seem to find themselves despairing, because being the high performers they are they are going to face going through life being overlooked by teachers more attuned to high-demanding students, life choices and economic benefits more oriented towards the needy and codependent, and tax rates more favoring of modest, low-income living. Criterion 5, freedom from corruption: Oh boy. Again, I ask myself how they measure this. Here's a little tip for all those who believe "corruption" is the cause of government inefficiencies, misery and oppression, etc: read some "Dilbert", and look specifically for the strips with Wally in them. Compare the behavior to that of public officials, and extrapolate just how much they might be able to get away with. We removed the "public servant accountability clause" (don't have a good translation here) from our laws in '74, under the then social-democratic government led by Olof Palme. In effectu, this removed the option to hold individual representatives of public organizations personally responsible for cock-ups in a broad scope, and places a wide level of separation between the parties whenever someone has to go to court. I've recently had a tussle with a psychiatrist at a government body who I have to judge as an utter incompetent (why someone with that level of conceit and incompetence at establishing rapport would ever choose to become a shrink, I've no idea) but was rejected in my appeal, because I could not go after her as an individual but had to face the whole institution. Corruption comes in many forms, and defining it only as rather simple concepts such as nepotism or information abuse is moronic, as it pays no heed to questions of efficiency or morality, only legality. Criterion 6, "generosity": And once more with the vagueness. What can I say other than the fact that public spending on charities and taxation to produce foreign aid is not the same thing as generosity. I am suspicious of any study here, because it's very easy to mistake policy for public attitude on this point. The US government is way more stingy with its foreign aid and medicare programs, however private charity is massively greater compared to that practiced here in Sweden measured per capita. I reiterate; Swedes tend to be reticent, reserved and procedural, and I speak from deep experience. For example, we've had a significant increase in beggars and foreigners walking the commuter trains looking for handouts over the last few years, and by all accounts they aren't doing well. Motions have been made both in Sweden and Norway to attempt to ban these occurrences. Unsuccessfully, I might add, but there's a serious sense to the whole debate that this is merely because of an attitude of political correctness rather than the fact that people wouldn't want to see them gone, and I've heard policemen say that they'd rather be given the leeway to make arrests so as to be able to put these people in a holding cell for "safekeeping" and then guide them to some public authority with more of an interest in what's good for them. While I cannot speak for the other Scandinavian countries, and certainly not for the Swiss or the Dutch, I have to count myself as extremely suspicious of any study of this nature. A fun linguistic tidbit; in Swedish, "efficiency" and "effectiveness" are the same word. Why this occurs in our language but not in our policies or popular philosophy, I have no idea.

Are you abandoning the concept of proportionality on purpose? Understand that I'm not asking this sarcastically; I'm genuinely wondering whether if you're trying to play Devil's Advocate here, but perhaps not putting it across as effectively as might be intended. I understand your mistrust of the behaviors and motives of the EPA, and the political ramifications that may come of driving the results of biased studies into paranoid policy, but...

It's always this appeal to higher morality that gets me wound up about religious people; not the belief in actual miracles or fables or dei in machina intervention, because that you can take or leave. Those aren't the important bits. But the idea that "godlessness" is always equivalent to immorality. As though mutualism, reciprocal altruism and deferral of gratification are just so many scribbled lines on a paper. Reason is hope. Morality is perfectly explainable through reason, possibly even mathematics, and the only reason that people in general do not see this is because they are sentimentalists. They're at such an intensely low level of perspective and buried in their own impressions and/or so affected by mere chemical triggers that they have a hard time looking at things from the outset. But if people can tie up such immoral concepts as democracy and the false assumption of human practicable egality with the justification for things like freedom of speech, choice and the pursuit of happiness as though they need some kind of physical validation for these things... well, then I'll just argue that tying up God with morality to the same extent is at least equally dangerous and likely to twist people's actual morality into knots, or produce such cognitive dissonance as to ultimately dissociate them from any morality with an actual logical basis, see; suicide bombers, "pro-lifers", luddites, etc. So no, I would never choose "hope" before reason. On a more personal level, it would also be because try as I might I think I'd still be aware of the choice and thus that the hope in question was fundamentally false on that account. And from one stance it could actually be argued that to be aware of this dissonance or one's refusal to accept morality, i.e. doing evil for evil's sake, is still morally superior to not realizing it and doing horrible things out of a misguided will to do good, even if the end product of either line of thought was an equal amount of theft, murder, cruelty to kittens, etc.

It's a "Use your best judgment; I'm aware that this is asking more of some than others, but I foreswear any responsibility for what happens when you decide to take action, and you should be repeating this 20 goto 10 style to the next man in the chain".

I'm not equating pollution with progress, merely recognizing that sometimes it is necessitated for industry which may or may not produce progress. Progress that is required to achieve the higher order of understanding required for a higher level of tech efficiency required for actual sustainability without sacrificing all the comforts and capabilities already gained, and making all the resources expended up until that point having been for naught. You know what the world is, when introduced to economy as generated by the human condition? With "rational actors" working within the constraints posed? It's a roguelike. Any decisions you make, stick. Any mistakes you make, stay made. You don't get to save scum or alter the conditions or the difficulty level; there's only one way, and that is forward. To be able to actually survive and reach an ostensible "winning" state, you have to manage things carefully and clear some significant hindrances in order to be able to "game" the system or the conditions enough to reach a state where you can go plus through your actions. And the trick is, that may be possible to achieve only as a net gain over a long sequence of steps and choices, rather than as a result of every single interaction. Like the point I made about the environmentalists; first you need the coal power to develop the industry to develop the technology for batteries and solar cells and appliances that will allow distributed power storage and household self-sufficiency, then you need to actually manufacture those technologies, and only once you've gone through all that maybe you can start phasing out coal and oil and uranium. Though, as mentioned, I'm talking from a purely technocratic perspective. As in, my personal interpretation is that the definition of a civilization's achievement or "worth" is the amount of technological and scientific insight it has produced and is capable of imparting on its lowest denominator, its letzte mensch. Yes, I'm so horrible that I don't think even personal comfort or happiness of a society's denizens is a factor, only their capabilities. In my defense however, I'd have to conclude from all the evidence that the most sure-fire way to achieve happiness is to have the pure capability, presumably through technology, to control as much of your life as possible. Of course, a big factor in this whole equation which adds to the "rogue-likeness" and Malthusian-trappiness is the assumption of continuous population inflation. But by comparison, that's fairly easy and straightforward a problem to solve; anyone else here up for a spot of genocide? We can throw a dice to decide who gets it? No? Didn't think so.

"An open mind is like a fortress, with its gates unbarred and unguarded." Nah, but really. For anyone vaunting the merits of open-mindedness I'd recommend reading a bit of Peter Watts. And after that I'll judge their intellectual honesty and disposition from their reaction to an introduction to the idea of truly alien perspectives of thought. At best, they'll become a bit more guarded and aware of how what appears to be independent cognition can play tricks on one, and at worst they'll just claim it as some kind of validation of their ideas, which is still a win-win because it makes me aware of their idiocy and will allow me to dismiss them while they go on having been entertained by some good literature. It's true that you need to be able to integrate new ideas and thoughts to your mind, but I put it to you that the very idea that there are such things as "open-minded" or "closed-minded" in the first place is erroneous. I'd say that in order to be able to determine the validity of any concept, theory or frame of mind, you need to have a "measuring stick" or "grayscale" to measure it against, and that the only limits to breadth and depth of perception are imposed by your own intellectual capabilities. Depends on what those "negative things" are. If he's assuming they screech like eagles, have laser halos hidden in their pockets and burn babies and snort the ashes, that'd be silly. If he's assuming on the other hand that they tend to be more gullible, more prone to moralistic brow-beating and tabooism and, if they're a high-school or college girl, more likely to have anal sex, then I'd have to get on his side, since those ideas have the statistics and science behind them. And given the right conditions, there's nothing inherently bad with any of those traits (at least, not to the individual). It's the same as with the Bible itself; it's not bad in and of itself or taken even as a cultural artifact. It's just wrong and untrue, but then so are some other much more wholesome and literally elegant works of fiction. The fact that an idea or a philosophy or whatever draws certain people doesn't necessarily say anything about the moral credentials of the thing itself, but may reflect a lot more on the nature of those people. Take eugenics, for example.

Take it easy, dude. All that straw could be a bitch to get out of your shirt. There's just too much simplicity and proximate reasoning here. Take a look at the Heidelberg Appeal; I know a lot of people who'd consider a lot of the points there as direct invitations to pollution, disregarding the fact that it would be for the sake of progress entirely. Similarly, the aluminium industry generates a crapton of pollution, yet the materials produced by that same industry may allow us to spare the environment an equal amount of pollution in fuel costs, waste and energy expenses, though only over an extended time period. And as another example, Miljöpartiet here in Sweden, the staunch short-sighted environmentalists who have been pushing ever more for the dismantling of our nuclear energy industry are directly contributing to the nation's economic decline by increasing foreign energy-dependency and hurting their own cause by forcing Swedish energy providers to buy power from non-sustainable sources such as, most egregiously, German coal. And that is in addition to dealing incalculable damage to local science and engineering efforts, and poisoning the public opinion and rhetoric. It's never as simple as just that. Even non-aggression is practically impossible, or at least unfeasible or unsustainable, if you're willing to hard-line the definitions enough. And that's what it sounds like to me; your girlfriend, driven by sentimentalist causes, is just going overboard and neither considering intent nor long-term benefits. But of course, I have to admit to being a ruthless technocrat and tree-burner myself. Hell, I think half-combusted diesel is the best smell ever. So you might want to take my advice with a pinch of salt as well.

I think there's a very simple explanation for this phenomenon, and if there's no maxim for this I'd like to propose it: "As the requirements of individual idealism, naivety and self-delusion necessitated to make a philosophy, model of economics or political theory practicable increase, the idealism, naivety and self-delusion of its proponents and subscribers increases correspondingly". Marx proposed communism because a) he was a self-deluded intellectually blinkered theorist, and b) because he thought everyone else was, or at least close enough to one. Either he could not see that his demands of altruism on anyone to be included in his system were too high, or he was naíve enough to not believe that others would see things differently. Am I right in assuming that these people also consider themselves to be staunch egalitarianists? Because that just takes the cake, and it shows exactly the kind of mindset that led to the pogroms and to Maoism; "if people are all created equal, then those who have more must simply be more avaricious". In practice it just turns out anti-structuralist and destructive, which I'd say is a good enough excuse to have them shot. I find it offensive when someone tries to rape science and statistics and good sense in mere words, but when someone wants to do something which might damage industry and set back technology, I'd say it's time to break out the 12-gauge.